Meet the new, young and female faces causing a stir in Japanese politics

The number of young women MPs elected to Japan's parliament has soared,
stirring interest - and controversy - in their wake.

By Danielle Demetriou in Tokyo

7:45AM BST 04 Oct 2009

One stripped down to her swimsuit for a magazine. Another confessed to having worked as a bar hostess - while a third shed her kimono and appeared topless in a gruesome horror film.

The once sombre and ubiquitously grey-suited world of Japanese politics has been both shaken and stirred by the recent arrival of an armada of young female politicians with pasts as colourful as their wardrobes.

Since the Democratic Party of Japan's (DPJ) leader Yukio Hatoyama was sworn in as the new prime minister last month, following his historic landslide victory at the polls, the nation's attention has not been confined to policy pledges.

Instead, one of the most visible shifts in the political landscape has been the arrival of a string of fresh-faced, brightly dressed young DPJ women in a world that has long been dominated by men in suits, most frequently from long-standing political family dynasties.

The rise of Japan's female politicians is modest but significant: the number of elected women in Japan's parliament has now risen from 43 to 56, with women now accounting for more than one in 10 in the lower house.

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The new prime minister has also appointed two female ministers, Keiko Chiba, 61, the new justice minister who opposes the death penalty and Mizuho Fukushima, 53, whose portfolio includes consumer affairs, population and gender equality.

While the figures remain low compared to other industrialised nations – where on average one in five MPs are female – it heralds a distinct change in tide for female politicians in a country where the ceiling is commonly described as concrete as opposed to glass.

Only last month, a United Nations panel urged Japan to take "immediate action" to eliminate discrimination against women in the workplace, setting a two-year deadline to improve working conditions.

And so it may come as a disappointment to female politicians that hand in hand with their rise to power has come the attention of the nation - as fuelled by weekly gossip magazines digging up a string of colourful tales surrounding new female recruits.

Among the most high profile is Mieko Tanaka, 33, a former secretary who was revealed last week - across four graphically illustrated pages of a weekly magazine - to have appeared topless in a cult horror film.

Other new arrivals include Kazumi Ota, 30, who formerly worked as a hostess in a bar, Kumiko Hayakawa, 38, who reputedly posed in a swimsuit for a weekly gossip magazine and Eriko Fukuda, 28, who won over young voters with an e-magazine distributed by mobile phone.

For most, the colourful past of a handful of women has been overshadowed by the positive implications of a surge in female presence in parliament, bringing hopes for a shift in the nation's gender imbalances.

Among them is Shino Aihara, 35, who joined the throng of first time politicians taking their parliamentary seats. "Frankly, I am very surprised to get first hand experience of how male-dominated a society this field is," she told The Sunday Telegraph.

"I would like to change the political outlook of Japan to a normal state - just like in a society consisting of people with equal rights - among female and male, and young and old.

"The Japanese female has traditionally considered being modest a virtue, and one could say that it has been a sort of custom to follow the gentlemen from behind. However, this is drastically changing nowadays."

Describing her first day as an MP, her colleague, Miss Fukuda, said: "I have never had such a great experience before. I feel a big responsibility to the people around me. Japanese lifestyles and the way of thinking have been changing and more women are working now compared with before.

"But it is still difficult for us to keep working, raising children and carrying out various housekeeping jobs. We need many more women in politics."

The gender shift began during the election campaign when a group of women candidates – typically young, attractive and inexperienced compared to the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) rivals they were challenging for seats – were unveiled by the party.

They were instantly dubbed the "Ozawa Girls" – so called after being hand-picked by Ichiro Ozawa, the DPJ veteran, former party leader and newly appointed secretary-general in charge of election strategy.

Miss Tanaka grabbed the nation's attention immediately as Japanese media excitedly observed how she launched her official campaign against a former LDP prime minister, Yoshiro Mori, 72, astride a bicycle wearing a pink shirt and white trousers.

Positioning her against the famously gaffe-prone Mr Mori was an astute move. Soon after she was adopted as a candidate Mr Mori caused a much-reported furore by saying: "She was picked only because she is young and has a nice body."

In the event she narrowly failed to defeat Mr Mori, but under Japan's proportional representation system she won an additional seat in the landslide victory that pushed out the LDP out after 50 years of near uninterrupted rule.

During the election campaign Miss Tanaka, a former politician's secretary, was revealed to have once worked under the pen name Bubka as a sex industry reporter, penning a racy column in which she interviewed sex industry workers.

In interviews between 2002 and 2004, "Bubka" talked to a series of women, with whom she was photographed dressed in costumes ranging from cheerleader outfits to kimonos.

The revelations continued when the magazine Friday disclosed that the politician had also appeared in the film, Blind Beast vs Killer Dwarf. It published images said to be taken from the film, made eight years ago, depicting Ms Tanaka slipping a white kimono off her shoulders.

Yesterday, the DPJ refused to comment on the report. But Professor Keiko Hirao, a specialist in gender studies at Sophia University in Tokyo, said all the new women MPs faced a tough time in what is still a male-dominated political environment.

"The arrival of these new women in parliament is very significant for Japan," she said. "The figure may still be low compared to other nations, but it marks a change.

"But they face many challenges. As we have seen already, they are likely to receive a lot more media attention.

"They will also face a struggle with resources. This is a world traditionally dominated by men – male politicians, male secretaries, male bureaucrats."